August 02, 2012
Some Thought Experiments Involving Assassination
1. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this one…
All posts in: Rights Theory
July 20, 2012
Seen and Unseen
Whenever there’s a violent tragedy, someone immediately starts using it as an excuse to restrict civil liberties. Many on the left understand this when it comes to the Patriot Act,…
July 20, 2012
Reading The Ethics of Liberty, Part 2 – Rothbard on Natural Law
Most people are comfortable thinking about libertarianism in connection with the idea of natural rights. And Rothbard’s form of libertarianism is, indeed, a natural rights position. But it is also a position…
July 05, 2012
Libertarianism, the Workplace and the Reconciling Power of the Social-Moral Order
I am delighted that Chris Bertram, Corey Robin and Alex Gourevitch (BRG) decided to engage BHL on workplace coercion. For my part, I will be disappointed if this discussion merely…
July 04, 2012
Freedom and Work
Crooked Timber just posted an article that discusses the posts I’ve written about the workplace. I enjoyed reading it (also- these follow ups) and I’ve been thinking about where we…
July 01, 2012
The Supreme Court Decision, Freedom of Contract, and Federalism
Let us assume that the health-care individual mandate violates a moral right, freedom of contract. If so, non-lawyers may find it mildly surprising that Sebelius was not about freedom of contract….